The Life and Times of the Cautious King of Araby

The man whose hand is on the valve of Middle East oil has whipped fine Arabian horses into desert battles and is said to have killed other men in close combat. Today he is guiding Saudi Arabia toward wealth and prominence, and doing much to mold the destiny of the oil-thirsty world. Perhaps more than any other ruler, King Feisal ibn Abdul Aziz al Saud, 67, is a living symbol of the idiosyncracies and aspirations of his country. To the Saudis, he is a kind of Winston Churchill or Sun Yat-sen and, in the best sense, a godfather.

Feisal is the third of more than 40 sons of Abdul Aziz ibn Saud, a tough Moslem chief who created the kingdom of Saudi Arabia by subjugating and uniting desert tribes and kingdoms. As a boy, Feisal was taught to read the Koran by private tutors, became an expert horseman and joined his father's military campaigns. In 1931, after Ibn Saud had consolidated his kingdom, Feisal was named Foreign Minister and began to travel extensively in Europe and the U.S. After his father died in 1953, Feisal's oldest brother Saud became King; but he proved inept, squandering oil revenues on monumental palaces, flashy Cadillacs and grafting relatives. By 1958 the royal treasury was scraping absolute bottom, and Saud asked Feisal to become Prime Minister. In 1964 more responsible family leaders finally forced Saud to step down in favor of Feisal, who reluctantly accepted.

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The difference between the two Kings could hardly be greater. A man of severely modest tastes and frugal habits, Feisal smokes cigarettes only in private, never drinks and apparently has no leisure-time activities. Islamic law permits polygamy, but he had two wives at one time only briefly in the 1940s, and then only to help cement a political alliance for his father. In all, Feisal has been married four times, divorced twice and widowed once. His present wife of nearly 40 years has borne him four daughters and five sons. The daughters are rarely heard of; the sons, along with three others from previous marriages, were almost all educated abroad (Oxford, Cambridge, Princeton, Whittier College) and hold high-and middle-level jobs in business, government and the military.

Feisal must be the world's hardest-working King. Like many executives, he suffers from ulcers, which have forced him to pare his workday from 18 hours to 14 hours. When asked about his health, he sometimes replies: "Still living." He rises at dawn, prays--one of five daily prayer sessions--and rides in the front seat of a Chrysler New Yorker from his unostentatious villa to his small, paneled office in the green-roofed presidential palace in Riyadh. He never uses the sprawling $60 million palace built by the profligate Saud. When an interior decorator had a sumptuous bath installed just off Feisal's bedroom in the villa, the King ordered it replaced with a less lavish model. "We are a simple family," he explained.

Every Thursday morning Feisal conducts a majlis, an ancient ceremony common in the Arab world, at which any male subject--rich or poor, high or low--can present the King with a request; it is usually referred to a minister for action or denied on the spot. Feisal has also been known to stop his car on the street, and step out to receive petitions from women. At noon every day, government officials, repairmen and anyone else allowed within the gates of the King's villa can join him there at a long, 40-seat table for lunch (usually bland meats, puddings and fruits in deference to his ulcers). In the afternoon he generally holds an informal reception for about 100 tribal and business leaders. Visitors to his office are often puzzled to see what looks like three bottles of perfume behind the King's desk; they are actually filled with different grades of petroleum. Feisal speaks English, French and Turkish, but insists on Arabic for official dealings; when meeting with foreigners he uses an interpreter--and sometimes corrects him in midsentence. Friends describe him as a good listener and a man who believes in the ancient Arab proverb, "God gave man two ears and one tongue so that we listen twice as much as we talk."

Feisal rules his people like a tribal chief, relying for advice on a small circle of ministers and halfbrothers. There are no elections, no political parties and no legislature and no constitution besides the Koran. Religion permeates public life, and the only law of the land is the law of Islam. The Mutawa, or religious police, patrol the streets to make sure that Saudis observe their prayer times and close their shops when they do so. Harsh penalties for crime remain on the books--stoning to death for adultery, beheading for murder, cutting off a hand for thievery--though they are far less frequently applied than they were years ago. As in many other Arab countries, drinking and smoking are nominally forbidden, but police today arrest only the public drinkers. Many resident foreigners and some Saudis concoct their own bathtub liquor.

Slowly and cautiously, Feisal has been nudging Saudi Arabia into the 20th century. He abolished slavery early in his reign. He introduced television over the protests of religious leaders, who called TV"the work of the devil." Saudi Arabia now has eight stations and about 300,000 sets. Government censors scissor out any scenes of drinking, smoking or passionate kissing. Saudi viewers have a particular fondness for American programs like I Love Lucy and Bonanza.

Under Feisal, Saudi Arabia has spent billions of riyals (about four to the dollar) on roads, public health and education, including the first schools for girls. Today more than 100,000 girls are in school, yet women remain last-class citizens in Saudi Arabia. They must wear veils in public, cannot drive cars or hold jobs that bring them into contact with men. Saudi Arabian Airlines has to recruit Lebanese and other foreign women as stewardesses.

Economically, the Saudis have decided to diversify by starting oil-based export industries. They are looking into petrochemical development and considering an advanced feasibility study for what would be one of the world's largest steel plants, with an initial capacity of 1,000,000 tons annually. The oil wealth is also trickling out among the people; the average worker's annual wage is about $ 1,500, triple that of a decade ago, and the government has sizable desert irrigation and reclamation projects under way to provide jobs and grazing land for Bedouin nomads, who make up about 20% of the population. The cities are bristling with construction cranes, and new Ferraris glisten in showroom windows.

The King is reluctant to push growth or social change too rapidly for fear of overinflating the economy and upsetting old social patterns. Many Western experts believe that he is too cautious. Says an American diplomat who served in Saudi Arabia: "Feisal is moving in the right way, but he needs to move a lot faster. He has to get the country off its duff." But Feisal insists that gradualism is best. "Revolutions can come from thrones as well as from conspirators' cellars," he has said. "We need everything in this country, but stability is the first priority. We are starting at the bottom, and we have to build slowly. We cannot make miracles overnight."

That caution may become a problem for Saudi Arabia. A new, small middle class of young, Western-educated technocrats is percolating through the country's businesses and bureaucracies. Before long they may begin demanding that Saudi Arabia move faster toward the modern world, and that they be given a greater voice in determining national policy.

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Another problem will be finding a successor to Feisal. Primogeniture is not mandatory in Saudi Arabia. The royal family in 1965 selected Feisal's half-brother Crown Prince Khalid, now Deputy Prime Minister, to be the next King. But Khalid, 63, is said to be shy and ineffectual; he also has heart disease. When Feisal leaves the scene, some family members may want to reconsider the choice of Khalid. Yet the supremely powerful, 5,000-member Saud family has usually avoided open conflict in the past, and some bargain could be struck. One such arrangement might be to enthrone Khalid, but give the real control to a younger, more dynamic man.

Whoever leads the country in the future will face a vexing question: What should Saudi Arabia's role in the Middle East be? Until recently, Feisal saw the role merely as that of a spiritual unifier for the Islamic world, and Saudi Arabia has stayed mostly on the sidelines of the struggle with Israel. Many other Arabs have tended to dismiss the Saudis as uncivilized and incompetent. But the war has done much to advance Arab unity, and Feisal's agreement to wield the oil weapon has done even more, earning him unprecedented respect and affection among Arabs. If Feisal's oil diplomacy can win the political victories that Arab arms have so far failed to achieve, the Saudi King may become one of the most important leaders in modern Middle Eastern history.

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